On the Margin of the General Meeting of the Lebanese Arab Women's Federation

The Lebanese Arab Women's Federation held a meeting embracing all its branches on the twenty-third of last February in the hall of the Normandy Hotel, in the course of which the committees representing the various associations that make up this Federation presented their annual reports on the various sides of their activity.

Those reports showed that women's activity has begun to take a road that inspires some optimism about its future. A sound awareness has begun to seep into women's ranks, and the various watchwords on whose basis the aims of these associations, and of the committees that spring from them, are fixed have begun to mean what they ought to mean to the members of those associations and their committees. It has thus become possible to define the aims with clarity, and to assign and delimit the tasks of each committee in the light of that awareness and that clarity.

And the enthusiasm of the ladies who took part in this meeting spread through that atmosphere a ray of deep hope in their blessed movement, which will without doubt be one of the principal factors that will carry Lebanon along the road of liberation and development.

The women's delegations that came to Beirut to take part in this meeting from the various towns and districts of Lebanon—such as Tripoli, Zahle, Sidon, Bino, and the district of Akkar—took luncheon at the Normandy Hotel. And the feeling that prevailed over the various women's organizations, in this atmosphere created by their activity embracing many fields, of importance in their own eyes and, in fact, to a degree—the feeling that prevailed over those organizations was one of pride, and of modest satisfaction, in what they are doing and in the sure results they expect for the future of that activity.

This feeling, rich in its deep human simplicity, was given expression by that lady of noble sentiment and feeling, Rose Shahfa, president of the Women's Federation, in a most felicitous speech; for behind its delicate phrases one could discern a single concern dominating all her thought and her feeling, and even her confidence. And that noble concern is the fruitful reform of society, and the true vindication of woman by peaceful means, as when she said: "We women are an element of building and of peace, not an element of destruction and demolition." Everyone who comes near this gracious lady senses in her, first of all, that love of peaceableness and concord which is rooted in her kindly nature.

I should have liked very much, while I am about this word, to be allowed to mention each one of the rapporteurs, who excelled so thoroughly in the composing and the reading of their reports, and to whom belongs the merit of awakening that hope to which I pointed at the opening of my word: the hope in the future of the women's movement. But were I to do so, the account would grow long upon me, and this brief word does not allow it.

At three o'clock the meeting broke up, each woman caressing her hope and her wishes for the fulfillment of the lofty aims toward which this blessed movement strives.

We hope that circumstances will grant the Women's Federation the possibility of renewing such meetings, so that there may be repeated this contact of minds which we witnessed on the occasion of the participation of the many delegations in the general meeting of the Women's Federation; for the contact of minds always leads to reform—that reform toward whose achievement woman hopes, above all else, to work hand in hand with man.